Government departments owe Rs 810 crore to PDD

Electricity Arrears Swell To Rs 1160 Crore

MUDDASIR ALI

Srinagar, Jan 30: While the total power tariff arrears against consumers in Jammu and Kashmir have swelled to Rs 1160 crore, different government departments owe payments around three times more than the arrears pending against domestic and commercial consumers.Sources told Greater Kashmir that while various Government departments owe almost Rs 810 crore to the Power Development Department (PDD), the arrears against domestic and commercial consumers are around Rs 350 crore.The PDD recently decided to crack whip on the consumers defaulting on payments of electricity charges for past many years.To begin with, it served a two-week disconnection notice to consumers in commercial category in Jammu and Kashmir provinces against whom the individual electricity bills have gone up to Rs 10 lakh or above. A senior official in the PDD said the power bill pending against this category of defaulters has swelled up to around Rs 55 crore.“These include 103 consumers from Jammu with outstanding of around Rs 39 lakh and 27 consumers from Kashmir with outstanding of Rs 14 lakh,” he said.However, sources said the department has no concrete plans to recovers the arrears from government departments. “The oft repeated claim by the authorities is that the recoveries made against the government departments will ultimately go to the government and hence it makes little difference,” said a senior official in PDD.“The defaulters’ list also includes some politicians and bureaucrats,” the official said. Development Commissioner Power, Manzoor Ahmad Salroo, said the department would continue with action against defaulters. He said it would soon come up with the list of defaulters against whom the power bills was Rs five lakh or above. “The process will continue and the department will do everything under law to recover the tariff,” Salroo said.However, he did not talk about the plans to make recoveries from the government departments.The PDD Chief Engineer (MnRE) Kashmir, Muzaffar Ahmad Mattoo, said the law empowers the department to disconnect the power supply to the defaulters.“If they fail to clear their dues we can take legal recourse which includes seizing the property,” he said.

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